A Study on Farmers’ Use Efficiency of Soil Health Card in Rangareddy District of Telangana State, India
Akula Latha Rani *
Department of Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore – 560 065, Karnataka, India.
S. Ganesamoorthi
Department of Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore – 560 065, Karnataka, India.
N. S. Shivalinge Gowda
Department of Agricultural Extension, Former Director of Extension, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, Hebbal, Bengaluru-560 024, India.
A. Sathish
Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru-560 065, India.
T. L. Mohan Kumar
Department of Agricultural Statistics, Applied Mathematics and Computer Sciences, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru-560 065, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Soil is natural non-renewable resources on human time scale which is the foundation for sustainable agriculture. In view of this, Global soil partnership was conducted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization at its headquarters in Rome, Italy, from 7 to 9 September 2011. With this, Government of India had launched the Soil Health Card Scheme (SHCs) in 2015. The scheme main objective is to distribute SHCs to each farmer in the country with advanced technologies such as GPS-enabled tablets and mass testing, along with better fertilizer subsidy policies. The research study was conducted during 2019-2020 to analyse farmers’ Use efficiency of SHC. Data was collected using a standardised and pre-tested interview schedule. It was revealed that slightly more than the three fifth SHC holders had partially used of overall use efficiency on SHC information (60.83 %), followed by not used (20.00 %) and fully used (19.17 %) of overall use efficiency on SHC information, respectively. All profile characteristics of farmers except mass media exposure had a significant to highly significant association with regard to use efficiency of SHCs. The results also revealed that there is a significant association between attitude and use efficiency (chi-square value 29.66).
Keywords: Farmers, soil health card, use efficiency, soil health, farmers, association